The Henson Journals

[615]

Saturday, January 22nd, 1916.

537th day

Robertson was a quixotically honest man. He would not be taken for what he was not, or accept applause which he knew or suspected to have been given on a misunderstanding of his real intention. This is the reason of his steady refusal to run in harness. He exasperated men by his untimely (as they naturally held them to be) explanations, when the one thing necessary was unity & fervour. Take as an example the case of the agitation for early closing set on foot by the shop–assistants of Brighton. Robertson cordially approved, and openly supported the movement, but he took the opportunity of the public meeting by which it was inaugurated to point out the special circumstances which made early–closing difficult in Brighton, and to lecture the ardent agitators on their tendency to misuse such leisure as they had. Take again his attitude towards the rising movement of the Christian Socialists, which F. D. Maurice & Charles Kingsley were organizing. His sympathies were certainly with them: his personal support would have been welcome: but he seemed far more anxious to dissociate himself from the Socialistic tendencies than to strengthen the Christian effort. He disliked the coarse vehemence, & indiscriminating censures of popular agitation: and he shrank from it: but his conscience was active & inexorable. He approved the objects while he loathed the methods of democracy. There was a moral & intellectual fastidiousness about him which held him back from going along with men, of lower ideals and rougher habit, even while he endorsed their main principle, & sympathized with their immediate object.

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